Hybrid Apps

At ThinkLABS our end customers are children who use our Robotic kit in classrooms. In India you will find schools running Windows 2000 , XP, 7, Vista. Computer Lab may have a network, and not necessary all computers have internet.

The Second Generation of Visual programming language that we are working on unlike the previous one CiMPLE is not a native application. I have looked at frameworks that allow web apps to work on desktop too. Google Chrome Packaged Apps is one such framework and most promising of the lots. We are not using it. Why because it doesn’t run on all windows OS.

So I ended up creating my own using C++/Qt. Qt never stops to amaze me. They have done a nice integration with QtWebkit that allows me to seamlessly integrate javascript function to C++/Python counterparts, I can pass data, trigger code against user interaction with components etc. As your code more less and less you run into a piece of code or software that make you as How the heck did they do this ?. It took me a while to realize they integrate javascript rendering engine to call corresponding C++/Python code. Amazing isn’t it. Qt as a community as a library is worthy of praise.